The invention relates to a cylinder head gasket with a single-layered or multilayered, at least substantially metallic gasket plate comprising for a sealing bead which is elastically deformable in height and surrounds a combustion chamber through-opening of the gasket a so-called double stopper for delimiting the bead deformation with a deformation delimiting device arranged radially inside the sealing bead and radially outside the sealing bead.
Such a cylinder head gasket is disclosed in EP-1 298 364-A of ElringKlinger A G (see lines 1-3 of page 6). In a gasket with a multilayered gasket plate, the deformation delimiting devices (stoppers) can all be provided on the sheet metal layer (so-called functional layer) provided with the sealing bead or on one or several of the other layers. It is, however, also possible to provide one stopper on the functional layer and another stopper on another layer. In a first embodiment of the cylinder head gasket according to EP-1 298 364-A, a single stopper is arranged between the combustion chamber through-opening and the associated sealing bead. The stopper is formed by a honeycomb pattern, surrounding the combustion chamber through-opening as a ring closed within itself, of knob-like elevations stamped out of the functional layer. In two further embodiments, the knob pattern is replaced either by a bead stamped into the functional layer, which, in a plan view of the gasket plate or the functional layer, forms a meander extending in circumferential direction of the combustion chamber through-opening, or by a crown, surrounding the combustion chamber through-opening, of short beads stamped into the functional layer and extending radially in relation to the combustion chamber through-opening.
EP-1 298 365-A of ElringKlinger A G discloses a multilayered metallic cylinder head gasket having two functional layers each with an elastic sealing bead surrounding a combustion chamber through-opening and with a further metal layer arranged between the functional layers, which is provided with a stopper lying between the sealing beads and the combustion chamber through-opening, which is formed by a two-dimensional pattern, produced by flow pressing, of discrete, cup-like depressions and elevations formed by material displaced during the stamping of the depressions and associated with the depressions. The stopper has elevations and depressions on both sides of this metal layer and, consequently, can delimit the deformation of both sealing beads.
The object underlying the invention was to create a cylinder head gasket of the kind mentioned at the outset, which with respect to the sealing around a combustion chamber through-opening and the stopper function has better characteristics in the long term than the above-described known gaskets.